The Baba, Singh Brothers and the Squandered Rs 225,00,00,00,000
How Malvinder and Shivinder Singh blew Rs 22,500 crore in less than a decade and lost control over Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises.
- Aug 20, 2018,
- Updated Aug 23, 2018 9:06 PM IST
An influential 'Baba' and his family with a weakness for materialism; two young businessmen loaded with nearly Rs10,000 crore from an asset sale; and a family confidante have together cooked a cauldron that Bollywood potboilers are made of. Their machinations wrecked a flourishing empire and vapourised nearly $3.2 billion (Rs22,500 crore then) into thin air.
Business chatter has been abuzz ever since brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh's debt pile of nearly Rs 13,000 crore came to light two years back. That was shocking considering that, as recently as June 2008, they had hit gold with Rs9,576 crore in cash from Japan's Daiichi Sankyo for the sale of India's then largest pharmaceuticals company Ranbaxy Laboratories-an inheritance from father Parvinder Singh.
How could they squander Rs22,500 crore, lose control of prized possessions such as Fortis Healthcare, once the country's largest hospital chain, and one of the largest NBFCs Religare Enterprises-all in a span of less than a decade? Two years after the Singh-Daiichi deal, Ajay and Swati Piramal also sold their pharma business to Abbott Laboratories for Rs18,000 crore. They re-invested the money to build assets worth Rs25,000 crore in just the listed companies across realty, finance and pharmaceutical research.
An influential 'Baba' and his family with a weakness for materialism; two young businessmen loaded with nearly Rs10,000 crore from an asset sale; and a family confidante have together cooked a cauldron that Bollywood potboilers are made of. Their machinations wrecked a flourishing empire and vapourised nearly $3.2 billion (Rs22,500 crore then) into thin air.
Business chatter has been abuzz ever since brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh's debt pile of nearly Rs 13,000 crore came to light two years back. That was shocking considering that, as recently as June 2008, they had hit gold with Rs9,576 crore in cash from Japan's Daiichi Sankyo for the sale of India's then largest pharmaceuticals company Ranbaxy Laboratories-an inheritance from father Parvinder Singh.
How could they squander Rs22,500 crore, lose control of prized possessions such as Fortis Healthcare, once the country's largest hospital chain, and one of the largest NBFCs Religare Enterprises-all in a span of less than a decade? Two years after the Singh-Daiichi deal, Ajay and Swati Piramal also sold their pharma business to Abbott Laboratories for Rs18,000 crore. They re-invested the money to build assets worth Rs25,000 crore in just the listed companies across realty, finance and pharmaceutical research.